Never Miss A Beat
by hyacinthian
Summary: Three to tango is never easy, but Santana keeps them all in step. MattSantana, BritSantana.


A/N: Unbetaed. This idea stewed in my head and just wouldn't go away. Seeing as how Matt got his first line of the show this past week, yeah, I have no idea how in character he is. But concrit is always appreciated. Please review.

* * *

She bumps into him at Puck's house party.

This isn't really his thing, but Mike wanted to come and besides, what else was he going to do on a Friday night? She sways over towards him, warm from dancing and too many jello shots, and the moment she leans in to bump her hips against his, smirking, is when he knows that she has him confused with someone else.

He's known her all his life and this Santana Lopez feels so different from the one he knew years ago. More self-destructive maybe, but aren't they all?

She presses her mouth against his then, urgently, insistently; he doesn't kiss back.

"What's the matter with you?" she rattles off in angry Spanish.

He says, "You're drunk."

She rolls her eyes. "You're fucking stupid," she says, before storming off furiously to look for Brittany.

He exhales, shoves his hands in his pockets, watching her carve a path through the crowd. He doesn't bump into her again that night.

He doesn't expect her to speak to him again for a while (their friendship has always been marked by boundaries of speech and silence, speech and silence), but three days later, she asks him to be her partner for a duet, their weekly glee club assignment. He shrugs.

* * *

It's a simple narrative, really. Boy and girl live down the block from each other. Boy's single mom works all the time. Girl's dad is a little crazy. They hang out, teach each other how to grow. And then one day, it stops. She becomes a cheerleader, and he joins the football team to follow her (just like he's always followed her), but their circles never really meet. He meets Mike, though. And things start moving again.

It's the law of physics, he guesses. He doesn't really know; he always fell asleep in Physics.

* * *

He doesn't expect anything to happen; his relationship with Santana is defined by stagnancy and spurts. Nothing at times, and then a leap. It's always timed to make sure he's the one who falls.

But two weeks later, she invents a pretense to show up at his house. Important to note, she's sober this time. Important because they've always been boy-and-girl-who-live-down-the-block-from-each-other, boy-and-girl-who-split-a-bag-of-Doritos, -who-fight-in-the-mud-with-punches-and-all, and now she's taking it to boy-and-girl-who-fuck-each-other-but-are-on-different-sides-of-the-emotional-playing-field. It's too long a term, and he knows it. It doesn't change the fact that her lips are soft and taste like the raspberry lip gloss she bought last week, that she smells like plain soap and sandalwood shampoo, and that he's kissing back because, well, they both know he's wanted this.

She only wants it because he didn't let her have it.

Santana likes to get what she wants and delayed gratification is better than an outright rejection. Matt knows her, knows the details of her exploits; he never figured he'd become another story she'd tell Brittany the next day.

She backs him up against a wall then, tongue sliding along his bottom lip, and she says, matter-of-factly, "This doesn't mean anything."

He shrugs as she tugs his shirt off. "I never thought it did."

But if this is the game they're playing, he knows the rules, knows the right buttons to push. She's trying to make him hurt because this is Santana Lopez, and she's always played more violently, more viciously than anyone else. She kisses him, roughly, wetly, and he groans into her mouth as she takes him in her hand with a large grin.

He says, "Stop."

"What? Can't perform?"

"Bitch," he says. "Bedroom."

She doesn't need to be told; she's been there a thousand times, memories of playing a beat-up Nintendo set when their classmates were getting computers.

The middle stair creaks.

In his room, he plans his next move; the minute she's at the door, he pulls her roughly towards him, slams her back up against the door as he shuts it. Her mouth is hot and his hands are cold, and there are clothes, clothes everywhere.

She's pulling off her top when he goes for the kill, with a nonchalant, "Trying to make Brit jealous?"

She bites his lip so hard it bleeds, marks his back with angry red scratches as he chuckles against the hollow of her throat. He knows how friendship with Santana works, and in a way, he imagines dating her must be like the boss stage at the end of the level - the rules are the same, but everything's harder. And if you die, game over. Well, dying in this case would be breaking up... or something. Never apologize, never regret, admit no weakness - it's a life philosophy that would make Sue Sylvester proud.

* * *

They don't talk afterward. There's just the rustling of sheets as she looks for her clothes and the soft sound of her clearing her throat. He reaches down to fish for the cigarettes he knows she stashes in her bag. She stands, sheets draped around her, picking up her clothes from around the room when she spies something on his wall. She gently fingers the construction paper, glitter flaking off onto the pad of her finger.

Her voice is soft: "Didn't I make this for you?"

"Third grade," he says.

She snorts, tearing it off his wall. "I can't believe you kept it." She crumples it and tosses it in the trash; the glitter sticks to her skin.

He stares at her as she gets dressed. "You want a cigarette?"

She shoots him a look, skirt up around her knees, half-zipped.

"What's your favorite color?" he asks, watching as she pulls her hair back into a tight ponytail.

"Purple."

She grabs her bag and pulls the door shut behind her before he can ask her why.

In the movies, where everyone stays the night and sex is always about love, she probably would have turned onto her side, asked him why he asked what her favorite color was, and he would just rattle off that all he remembered about purple was that it was a royal color. The camera would close in on her face as she snorted and rolled her eyes, declaring that she _was _royalty.

He lies awake, listening to the slow hiss of the burning paper, waiting for her smell to fade.

* * *

He talks to Mike about it, the weird limbo he's found himself in. Mike just shrugs. "You're just hung up on her, dude."

Matt doesn't say anything.

"Taco Bell?"

Matt jerks his head towards the school; they have glee rehearsal and skipping it?

Mike laughs. "Finn's practicing his solo today. They won't even know we're gone. And you know cheap chalupas fix anything."

As they walk towards the Taco Bell down the road, Mike tries to impersonate the Taco Bell chihuahua.

* * *

The second time he sleeps with Santana (and honestly, he didn't even think there would be a second time), she stays in bed a little longer.

He tries to ask why she'd sleep with him again, out of all the guys she's ever slept with, but he can't think of a way to phrase it or even how to bring it up, so he doesn't.

"Let me have a cigarette," she says, snapping her fingers. His fingers brush hers when he hands her one.

"What would your parents think?"

She doesn't miss a beat - "At least this place is better than fucking Puerto Rico."

He switches on her iPod and Selena starts playing. In the middle of the second verse, she gets up to get dressed, gone before the chorus starts.

The only Selena song he knows is the English one: _late at night when all the world is sleeping, i stay up and dream of you_

Ironic.

* * *

Brittany asks him if they're dating now, officially, at lunch the next day. She scrunches up her nose for a second, vaguely confused. "I mean, she would tell me if you _were_, which she hasn't, but she keeps looking at you. Santana doesn't look at anybody unless it's to make them cry or she's dating them."

He says, "No. We're not."

Brittany blinks, then smiles. "Oh, okay," she says, before she turns on her toes to bounce off towards the cheerleader table. It makes him angry for whatever reason - the look of happiness on her face - and he just thinks, _fuck, Santana, you gotta stop getting people to fall in love with you. _

He doesn't know where that thought even comes from.

He stabs at his peaches in light syrup.

* * *

It's when they hook up every other weekend that he gets the balls to ask her if he's her favorite.

"Favorite what?"

His voice is all bitterness when he says, "Favorite fuck buddy."

She laughs, arms draping over his shoulders. She bites his neck. "_Te amo,_" she coos, mockingly, and he shrugs her off. She lies back against the pillows.

"You love her?" he asks, pulling on his pants.

"Who?"

"Brittany."

His back's to her, but he can practically see her lips purse. There's a long pause and then, soft, "She's my best friend. Of course I do."

"Right."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"You love me?"

He zips his fly. "You're my best friend. Of course I do."

"Mike's your best friend."

"Not impossible to have more than one best friend." It's his turn to leave, his turn to slam the door behind him. "My mom's making garlic chicken on Thursday, you can come over if you want."

"Thanks but no thanks."

"She says she wants to know how you're doing. You used to come over."

He walks out before she has time to answer, closes the door on anything she has to say. It's hard for him to separate the then from the now, the old Santana from the new one, the fake from the real. Maybe Mike's right and maybe he has been hung up on her for way too long, but this whole friends with benefits thing isn't working either. He feels like he's in limbo. He just wishes she would make up her fucking mind and stop stringing people along.

_and i wish on a star  
that somewhere you are  
thinking of me too_

_

* * *

_

At football practice, Puck runs up to him, smacks a hand on his back. "So I hear you're doing Santana. Good for you. She's crazy."

"Man, I never know what she wants."

"Like I said, dude, _crazy_."

Across the field, the Cheerios practice. She chucks a pom-pom in his general direction.

"_Puta_," he calls.

She gives him the finger.

* * *

Brittany comes up to him after rehearsal, suggesting that they have sex.

He tilts his head to the side, confused. "What?"

"I mean, you and Santana have had sex, me and Santana have had sex, so why shouldn't you and I have sex?" She blinks. "Plus, I've slept with like everyone at this school, so."

He shakes his head.

"I even made out with Kurt. Is it possible I degayified him?" A pause, then: "We could just make out."

(They get drunk at a house party two weeks later and do that: it's awkward, her tongue is in his mouth and their teeth keep bumping together and she tastes like cinnamon sugar.

Afterward, she says, "Okay, I can't make out with you anymore. That was worse than Kurt. And he had a reason.")

It doesn't help him forget Santana.

* * *

After dress rehearsal for regionals, he sits on the risers, waiting for Mike.

She comes out and sits by him.

"What do you want?"

"Brit keeps saying we should have a threesome." She nudges his shoulder with hers.

He laughs. "Girl, you need to sort out your shit."

She just tosses her head. "My shit is sorted. I have you and Brittany."

She holds out her fist; he knocks his fist against hers.

"Now, come on. Before Mr. Schue uses this as a reason to make a speech to do cheesy songs again."


End file.
